Vegetable oil in Diesels

FunkyDa

Anybody running their Diesel engine on vegetable oil?

maidhc

Its a very bad idea unless you have something like an old toyota or a merc.

You will destroy about €2k worth of injectors and diesel pumps if you try it in a common rail or modern VW TDI... they are built to very tight tolerances, and dont like pumping weird thick stuff to 1500psi!

Big Nelly

FunkyDa wrote:

Anybody running their Diesel engine on vegetable oil?

Are you asking about the converted diesel engine's that run on rapeseed oil?

FunkyDa

Big Nelly wrote:

Are you asking about the converted diesel engine's that run on rapeseed oil?

That, and regular supermarket vegetable oil. I have heard of a Berlingo being run on a mineral oil/ vegetable oil mix.

maidhc

FunkyDa wrote:

That, and regular supermarket vegetable oil. I have heard of a Berlingo being run on a mineral oil/ vegetable oil mix.

You would probably get away running any old-skool diesel engine (like the PSA 1.9D in the berlingo) on cooking oil by only doing the following:
a) Starting and stopping the car on diesel (switch on the dash)
b) having a seperate fuel tank for the mineral diesel
c) having a heater for the cooking oil to thin it down. The heater is normally a coil around the cooking oil filter.

I have seen it be done to an old Corolla and a Sunny, but I dont know much else. It wont work with a modern diesel, in fact VW no longer even recommend 100% refined biodiesel for their TDIs, even though they once used it as a major selling point.

Green Driver

I have been using rapeseed oil in a 2004 diesel Skoda Octavia since April 2006 and I am pleased with the performance. I bought the Skoda second hand and I spent about €2,000 euro, including VAT, getting it adapted to run on pure vegetable oil.

I got the car in February 2006 and used diesel in it for 2 months. After I switched to using rapeseed oil, there was no reduction in performance. The car does about 40 miles to the gallon.

The car was adapted by Allen Holman (DAS Garage,Gorey, Co Wexford), http://www.ecocar.ie/, and Peter O'Neill (Kilpedder, Co Wicklow) http://www.ecomotion.ie/.

I buy rapeseed oil fuel for my car from Eilish Oils, http://www.eilishoils.com/
They sell the rapeseed oil in 1,000 litre plastic containers which you can put in your garden and get refilled by them as necessary. I call into a place in Dun Laoighaire owned by one of the directors of Eilish Oils and get my car filled there at 84 cent a litre.

The rapeseed oil sold by them is exempt from excise duty, but they pay VAT on it.

It is physically (but it may be illegal if you do not pay VAT) possible to use rapeseed oil of the right quality bought in a shop as fuel in a diesel car which is able to run on rapeseed oil. I do not know if other vegetable oils, such as sunflower, or olive, oil, could be used as fuel.

Apparently, vegetable oil sold as food is zero rated for VAT, so if you use it as fuel, which is subject to VAT, you might be breaking the law. I am going to make enquiries to see if it is possible to arrange to pay the VAT on oil bought as food and then use it as fuel.

Do-more

Many converted cars are run on (filtered) used vegtable oil, Milbrook Foods in Oldcastle will sell you any amount you want at 35 cent a litre, or if you know someone with a chipper you could get it for free! If you do a search there are quite a few threads on the subject, one particularly long one in "Green issues"

If you go to the trouble of getting a bulk tank at home to store the used veg oil you can also get central heating burners that will run on the stuff, makes heating your house (or swimming pool!) affordable again....

3ps

you need to have clean waste vegetable oil and there is alot of work to do to get it clean and remove the water from it. I wouldn't use WVO.

There is now a kit available for the high pressure diesel units from VAG. I'm getting one fitted soon.

Andrew33

or if you know someone with a chipper you could get it for free!

As long as you don't get it from a certain chipper in Dublin which uses lard which sets into a solid block when cool:D

Darsad

maidhc wrote: »

, and dont like pumping weird thick stuff to 1500psi!

Its more like 28,000 psi at full throttle !

Gary ITR

Andrew33 wrote: »

or if you know someone with a chipper you could get it for free!

As long as you don't get it from a certain chipper in Dublin which uses lard which sets into a solid block when cool:D

Please don't bump ancient threads